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Big-box arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby will surrender some 5,500 artifacts it purchased illegally and pay $3 million after federal prosecutors filed a civil complaint in New York yesterday, reports Dan Whitcomb at Reuters.
The objects are believed to come from Iraq, where they were smuggled into other Middle Eastern countries. In 2010, they were sent to the United States falsely labeled as clay tiles.
[...] The items include 144 cylinder seals, used to roll decorative images onto clay, as well as clay bullae, which were used to create wax tokens to authenticate documents. The majority of the items are cuneiform tablets. Cuneiform is a type of writing developed about 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Iraq, Smithsonian.com's Anne Trubek reports. Over time, the writing, which looks like a series of lines and triangles impressed into palm-size pieces of wet clay, was used for over a dozen ancient languages, much like the Roman alphabet for most European and Romance languages.
So, why was a craft chain buying ancient Iraqi artifacts in the first place? Whitcomb reports that company president Steve Green is the founder of the Museum of the Bible, now under construction in Washington, D.C. He began acquiring artifacts for the museum, including the forfeited items, in 2009.
Also at NYT. DoJ and Hobby Lobby statements.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 08 2017, @12:51AM
Sounds like you have that problem instead. The Right isn't instituting smoking bans, mandatory nutrition listings in restaurants, 55 MPH speed limits, Politically Correct (PC) culture, regulating away incandescent light bulbs and toilets that flush, or trying to start race wars with the pretext of ending racism. There's a lot going on here which you seem to be missing.
Well buttercup, it would need to be a mistake/lie first. Noting obvious counterexamples to your prior arguments don't count.